Airplane Concepts

NASA and its industry partners have conducted conceptual aircraft design studies to estimate fuel and emissions reductions and to determine the technological requirements for each configuration. Aircraft concepts span a range of sizes, markets, and technology assumption time frames.

Subsonic Single Aft Engine (SUSAN) Aircraft

NASA’s SUbsonic Single Aft eNgine (SUSAN) Electrofan is an advanced hybrid-electric concept aircraft designed to minimize environmental impacts and ...

Single-Aisle Turboelectric Aircraft with Aft Boundary Layer Propulsion (STARC-ABL)

In a new era of electric flight, NASA is exploring innovative Electrified Aircraft Propulsion (EAP) technologies to significantly reduce fuel burn and ...

N3-X

The NASA N3-X is a revolutionary aircraft concept striving to make future commercial air travel more efficient, convenient, and sustainable. Featuring ...

Aircraft Configurations

Electrification of commercial airliners can help significantly reduce harmful emissions in the atmosphere and improve aircraft performance through ...

Partially Turboelectric

NASA STARC-ABL: fuel burn reduction, same range, speed, airport infrastructure. Same turbine/airframe technology, Advanced 2-3MW power system, BLI, ...

Hybrid Electric

Airframe/propulsion remains relatively decoupled. Parallel hybrid, 150 passenger, 900 nm on battery 1.3 and 5.3 MW machines considered Fuel off-loaded 750 ...

Take a look at some of our flight demonstrators.